Participative Planning for Managing the Seashore of Galinhos, Rio Grande do Norte, Northeast Brazil, Using Remote Sensing Support and Coastal Modeling

Abstract

This work aims to raise the discussion about the experience of coastal planning and management for the seashore of Galinhos municipality, a town located in the Northern coast of the State of Rio Grande do Norte, by applying the methodology proposed for the Seashore Integrated Management (SIM), and complementary tools for strategic and participative planning,  such as the Brazilian Coastal Modeling System (SMC – Brazil), remote sensing and image survey by unmanned aerial vehicle.  These tools associated with participative workshops as proposed by the Seashore Project made possible to locate coastal line modifications and the spatial expansion of land uses in strictly use-controlled territorial areas which are subject to natural geodynamic processes. The modeling indicated an intense wave of energy reaching the peninsula, with an annual average flow of 366,43 J/m.s, and with the transportation of 185.839 m³/per year of beach sediments, with a tendency of opening a canal and isolating the sandspit. Estimation of the plan-shape equilibrium of Galinhos and Galos districts bays indicates a trend of shoreline transgression of around 80 m and 120m in their direction, respectively. The SIM review also served to collect data that will be useful for devising the Participative Land Use Master Plan of the Municipality (PDP, in Portuguese). Such tools and technologies are indispensable, therefore, in the process towards an integrated management planning of the coast. They allow for a better understanding of the coastal dynamics by locals, by local managers and by other key actors in charge of undertaking the SIM and PDP, among other instruments of territorial and environmental management of areas located near the coastline.